Posted
by
Soulskill
on Tuesday March 05, 2013 @10:05PM
from the slowly-but-surely dept.

dp619 writes "In an interview, Microsoft Regional Director Patrick Hynds says that avoidance of open source components by a large part of the .NET developer population is abating. '...While some may still steer clear of the GPL, there are dozens of FOSS licenses that are compatible with Windows developers and their customers,' he said. Hynds cites NuGet, an open source package management system was originally built by Microsoft and now an Outercurve Foundation project, as an example of FOSS libraries that .NET developer are adopting for their applications. Microsoft itself has embraced open source — to a point. It has partnered with Hortonworks for a Windows port of Hadoop, allowed Linux to run on Windows Azure, and is itself a Hadoop user."

Perhaps, but the company that once called it a "cancer" is going to have a hard time reconciling its culture to it - especially since Microsoft relies on proprietary software for its very existence. Sure they do make (and mostly give away) some FOSS software, but it's very little and you really have to look for it.

I suspect that the best Microsoft could do is to try and hijack existing FOSS projects and slather on a proprietary UI, or some sort of glue to tie to loosely to products they already make.

Incidentally, Microsoft tried this gambit before with its 'me too!' 'shared source' licensing (and similar). I wonder how many projects not hosted/sponsored/funded by Microsoft actually use those?

Sure they do make (and mostly give away) some FOSS software, but it's very little and you really have to look for it.

ASP.NET [codeplex.com], Entity Framework [codeplex.com], and Rx [codeplex.com] are all non-trivial Open Source projects by Microsoft which I use daily at work. They are all under the Apache License 2.0, not one of those ridiculous "shared source" licenses. They make use of existing third-party Open Source libraries. They manage the projects in the open and accept contributions from non-Microsofties.

Additionally, Microsoft has embraced NuGet, a third-party dpkg/apt for.NET libraries which has thousands of projects in it. It's integrated into the latest Visual Studio, and Microsoft uses it as their primary distribution point for nearly all of their Open Source projects.

Microsoft has a pretty shitty history when it comes to Open Source, but they really have turned over a new leaf on the subject. I think they've come to realize that it's better to foster than to dictate -- you're still using their product (.NET) in the end, after all. Some purists won't be happy with that, I guess.

I see no evidence that.NET developers have an avoidance of open source. The linked article actually seems to present evidence to the contrary. Paraphrasing here:

Q: Why have.NET developers been slow to adopt open source??PH: The open source movement is not incompatible with the Microsoft development world...commercial software developers represent a big constituency among the.NET Framework community and based on my experience these shops are very cautious about incorporating open source libraries because the licensing...

So what they are really saying is that *commercial software developers* are hesitant to use open source because of licensing issues. That is probably true. That problem is not specific to Microsoft.NET developers, but spans languages and operating systems. That is very different from saying that.NET developers have not been averse to using open source. They use open source far more than their VB and C++/Windows API wielding predecessors. Here is a short list of open source projects I have used at commercial software companies off the top of my head:

Cringeley (I think) wrote a column once that opined that Microsoft should just make Windows into a desktop environment for Linux, thereby gaining the services of a huge community of excellent kernel developers. It made a kind of sense.

Jim Allchin, when he was the number four guy at Microsoft, more than a decade ago, at about the time of the DOJ vs Microsoft antitrust trial, said that Open Source was un-American and that the legislators needed to be educated to the danger. That is from memory. As much as I hate to provide citations, let me google that . . . oh here . . .

According to the hive mind of Microsoft, open source should be made illegal. There's no way around it, this is the bottom line. Want to write your own code and release it into the community? Congratulations, come with us Sir/Madam, we have this nice little grey room for you. Don't worry about the bars on the windows, they are there for our protection in case you somehow manage to write a graphics viewer or a Perl script to terrorize the world.

Ordinarily, a mere underling like Mr. Allchin wouldn't be taken too seriously, but Microsoft speaks with one voice, and we all know who he is channeling.

As a member of the Linux and Open Source communities, I am appalled and outraged by his comments and wish to respond. The article shows Microsoft is scared. Very scared. So, will they build a better product? Nah, to hell with it, they'll just get the government to outlaw the competition.